Not to mention that with several companies involved with the Shadowrun license itself, it took a bit to get approval to work on SR5 for Hero Lab. As pointed out, it's not the only project they have. Heck, with as much stuff as Pathfinder cranks out, it's a wonder they can get work done on anything else.

Its good to know a few things
1. That they started from scratch
2. That they are busy and Shadowrun really is a backseat project.

Many of us already know the Shadowrun license is... convoluted at best.

I am in the industry, so I understand the concept of Mythical Man Month. Thus, I am not saying they could pour new engineers in today and get the product out tomorrow.
However, if as you point out Pathfinder consumes the development cycles of the current developers/QA , then fundraising could help fund new additions for shadowrun in the future. If they are still working on the basebook for another year, Run and Gun will sit in the queue.
While not cheap, lets say in the hundreds of thousands, a target fundraising goal to hire a dev now and bring her up to speed over the next six months would be awesome. Then starting in 2015, Shadowrun can get already licensed product support down to a 6 month lag time. Already its been Nov-Dec-Jan-Feb-March since the SR5 announcement.

I'd kick in some money as its certainly better to have one common and supported tool, over a myriad of broken tools from the net.

I'm kind of sad... as a member of the Catalyst Labs Demo Team, I pretty much just ran Shadowrun. Using HL to stat out and track NPCs was something that helped me be able to run SR at conventions.

But with SR5 out since Origins 2013(and they had to have gotten pre-release materials to LW), and Origins 2014 being about 2 months away it makes me sad.

If they could work out a structured set of code/rules to handle everything, they could do what they did with SR 4, which was to hire 3rd party contract data entry clerks to enter SR5's data for them.

At the same time, Catalyst hasn't exactly been forthcoming on releases either... we've got what... 2 Shadowrun Missions for Season 5? Technically this year should be Season 6.... but even if it was Season 5... we're still at a point where we should have had more.

Shadowrun 5 is in progress, and the end is in sight.

I need to clear up a few mistaken assumptions;

The SR5 files started with the SR4 files. We did not re-invent the wheel.

The majority of the changes between 4th and 5th (from the point of view of the data files) have been to the details of how things are handled. There are relatively few changes in the data itself. For example, in 4th, you can only have one specialty/skill - spending karma to get a new specialty replaces the existing one. In 5th, you can get an unlimited number of specialties/skill (but only one at character creation). The list of skill specialties barely changed. That means that there's very little room for a contractor to help - the majority of the changes that needed to be made were to the way skill specialties functioned, not the list of skill specialties out there.

For things like the gear, most of them changed their description text and cost, but relatively few items were deleted from the gear list, and relatively few new things were created, and very few changed the way they actually functioned. That also makes it hard to make efficient use of a contractor, because the way Hero Lab's editor works, the contractors couldn't edit the raw data - I'd need to take in what they created, inspect it all for correctness, and then replace the existing material with the new versions, and then change the Ids of the items back to what they had been, rather than the Id created for the new version. The amount of time I need to spend on all that is barely smaller than the time it takes me to make the 4th->5th changes myself.

We will be using contractors for Run & Gun and all the future Shadowrun 5 material.

Thanks for the update Mathias. I've been interested in buying this product, but been holding out for SR5 :) Can't wait to finally try it out. My gaming group normally runs Starwars D20 and Call of Cthulhu. They've been holding off on letting me teach them SR5 because I've wanted to have this tool at my side when we finally do!

And there's now another free tool built off of Chummer that apparently got out the door first. LW needs to get the SR 5 version of the rules out like yesterday.

Taking this long to get the Sr 5 ruleset out is not going to help sales

http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/...&topic=15185.0

I took it for a spin. It was...painful.

I didn't say it was great... but I was seriously hoping we'd see SR 5e from the official character generator before we'd see it from a hobbiest... That's all...

Hope to see this one soon. Going through the book and calculating by hand is tedious if you are not used to it anymore... ;) I want to spend some money.

The latest Update (March, received 03-31-14) did not even mention ShadowRun for Hero-labs and since this is published monthly I would make the assumption that ShadowRun 5e for Hero Labs will not be out until at least May.

Our last month was crazy busy due to the release of Realm Works and the Encounter Builder for Hero Lab in the same week, so we dropped the ball on an SR5 update. :(

Things are progressing, and we are hoping to have more than an update for everyone this month - look for more information around the middle of the month.

Me too... LW will get my money on the day they offer it up for pre-purchase... HL SR4, while not always perfect was an amazingly good tool for both playing and GMing

By chance would the delay in news happen to be related to Run & Gun getting released this week?

Doubtful, as I would assume that Run & Gun will be in a supplement, rather than the original dataset.

Is this week a definitive release date for R&G? I haven't seen that anywhere, but would be thrilled if it is.

Catalyst hasn't given out a release date for Run & Gun that I have seen, and since their policy is to not give a date until the book is ready to ship to stores, I imagine it's going to be a bit more before it releases. You can probably expect to see the PDF version before the actual release.

One of the catalyst guys put a note on his facebook page that hinted that R&G will be released in PDF latter this week.

Red

There should be a forth preview this week and most likely a 5th and 6th then the actual release.

Actually, I just saw a post on Catalysts forums: Run & Gun is live!

Not in the official news feed. so no announcement.

http://www.battlecorps.com/catalog/p...oducts_id=3303

You can wait on an announcement, I'll read the book.

Excellent news! Now I just have to get home so I can download it and enjoy it. :)

The Catalyst's Shadowrun Products section of their forums is the best place to keep an eye out for information; you often see mention of a new product there long before the News section.

Lot's of comments get made on forums. The news feed is the official company line, and Run & Gun is now official.

You look for the posts by someone from the company, which that several were, or just follow the links given for the PDF at one of the websites selling it.

So, any chance ShadowRun will be released before Saturday? I have to make a few 'extra' characters and don't want to put in the work doing it by pencil and paper if I can avoid it.


[Inserting a funny]
I am not really holding my breath, but I helped an old lady cross the street today to get some good Karma. Found out later she did not want to cross the street, and had a heart attack and died trying to get back across. That deserves some good karma right? I can do a few other good deeds if it helps :)

Next month? Cool.

Yep, it's in beta testing right now. They say it should be available around the beginning of next month.

Finally
 

Yes! Been waiting to throw my money at HL!

http://www.wolflair.com/blog/2014/04/18/april-news/

My group is mainly D20 Starwars and Cthulhu, but I've gotten them interested in SR5 since it came out and I ran and loved shadowrun since SR2 so I'm hyped about introducing the guys to the Sixth World!!

Okay It's the 30th in Australia! where's the newsletter!! ;P

Excellent! I'm ready to pick it up!! Sounds like its going to be awesome!

http://www.wolflair.com/news/newsletter/april-2014

Does anyone have any idea of how long till the rules and weapons in Run & Gun will be available in Hero Lab?

Thanks

Aric

We won't be starting Run & Gun until the game system itself is done, and until then I can't make a good estimate of the time required.

Having worked on Deathwatch and AD&D2e files I can say that I understand fully about not having a time estimate. Turning the skeleton files into a game system is a pretty big undertaking. And I don't have a team of coders helping me, I just get help when you aren't too busy. If you need help on adding Shadowrun content for 5e I'd be willing to work on it once you've got the core structure files ready to go.

Thanks for the update. hope I didn't sound harsh in my question, as I understand you guys are working your butts off to get these done. I just wanted to have an idea so I can plan ahead. If SR5 uses the lock your character for advancement feature then I wanted to wait for both books since I know my players will want to add Martial arts. I will just use paper sheets for now.

Can't wait to see the program

Aric

You do know that in SR4 (and I'm going to assume that SR5 will have the same) you could lock and unlock your character to play with character builds.

I do know that but every time I have tried it it causes issues. Each time I have unlocked it to adjust something it appears to adjust the amount of build points to match any additions since character creation and them puts me over and flags the character with a warning. Really didn't want to mess with that this time around.

I'm looking forward to learning this system in the editor.

It's official - Shadowrun 5th Edition will be releasing on May 23rd! Check out our webpage for more information.

STOKED. Can I just pay for it now?

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/6103350784/hDD5A5C4F/

Any Predictions about the Supplements?
 

That's great! However, most of us who play SR, either 4 or 5, want the supplements, too. Do you have any comments about the availability of supplements for HL-SR5?